I'd say there's still a role for "atheist advocacy" or whatever you want to call it, but I feel like we're doing pretty fine and jettisoning Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins (and Hitchens, if he were alive) would be just fine. Things were a bit different under Bush... And if Pence ends up in the Oval Office, things might head back in that direction, but I think the religious right is doing more to discredit themselves right now than anyone with their undying support of Trump.

On a related note, is there any opinion I should have about Daniel Dennett anyway? He's often lumped in with the others as one of the "four horsemen" but he doesn't seem to be a publicity hound like the others and I haven't really heard anything from him that seemed objectionable (because I haven't heard much from him in general).

On a related note, is there any opinion I should have about Daniel Dennett anyway? He's often lumped in with the others as one of the "four horsemen" but he doesn't seem to be a publicity hound like the others and I haven't really heard anything from him that seemed objectionable (because I haven't heard much from him in general).

I don't think Daniel Dennett likes to talk about things outside his areas of expertise.

While that's refreshing and helps him avoid foot-in-mouth disease, it would be nice if he actually took a stand and opposed some of the idiocy coming from the other 2.

I don't think there's a huge need for atheist advocacy, really. There's a huge need for separation of church and state, science advocacy, reproductive healthcare, diversity, education, etc., but the problem isn't religion in itself, really. It's religious persecution, particularly by authoritative, patriarchal religions. It's the scope and reach of what church leaders are trying to control, and what variously cynical adherents like Pence and other godbothering politicians try to attach it to.

And I don't think the solution to a bunch of bossy old men trying to control people with their religion is to establish groups of bossy old men trying to control people with an authoritative, patriarchal atheism movement. Not that Dick Dorkins and his ilk can't say what they want to say or whatever, but they shouldn't be held up as spokesmen for any kind of social movement or whatever. Their expertise is narrow, and they're not really qualified to be passing judgment or proposing social change based on that, any more than some old religious authority is.

New presbyter is but old priest writ large, as I believe the young people say.

[...] bossy old men trying to control people with an authoritative, patriarchal atheism movement.

I don't think the former is synonymous with the latter and it's certainly not what I meant by "atheist advocacy". I agree that the latter is bad, which is why I think Harris and Dawkins should go away/stop talking about things outside their area of expertise (evolution for Dawkins and ??? for Harris).

Quote:

There's a huge need for separation of church and state, science advocacy, reproductive healthcare, diversity, education, etc., but the problem isn't religion in itself, really. It's religious persecution, particularly by authoritative, patriarchal religions. It's the scope and reach of what church leaders are trying to control, and what variously cynical adherents like Pence and other godbothering politicians try to attach it to.

I don't agree exactly. I think religion per se is part of the problem. Authoritarianism and religion go together like PB&J.

I see what you're saying, but the religions we're talking about are just tools for social control. That's why pretty much every tightly controlling, partiarchal religion ends up as a big fat pedophile ring. And why any "new atheism" movement would end up the same way. And why the one we have is already so clueless.

It's just kind of weirdly controlling, trying to turn it into a big umbrella issue with leaders and all. I'm not talking about the FFRF and stuff like that, but an overall social movement. Everything's a fucking cult anymore, and I hate it.

I’m tired of hearing from my mom’s neighbors in her Del Webb community how unhappy they are about the Raiders moving to Las Vegas, and the “gangster” Raiders fans who are going to come and ruin their famously morally upstanding city.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory on narrow grounds to a Colorado Christian baker who refused for religious reasons to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, stopping short of setting a major precedent allowing people to claim exemptions from anti-discrimination laws based on religious beliefs.

The justices, in a 7-2 decision, said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed an impermissible hostility toward religion when it found that baker Jack Phillips violated the state's anti-discrimination law by rebuffing gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig in 2012. The state law bars businesses from refusing service based on race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation.

Today I learned that a narrow grounds ruling is a ruling not meant to be broadly applicable, a ruling just for a specific purpose.

As soon as the decision was announced, I figured that someone would use it as an excuse to insist that there is a "right" to discriminate against people whose skin color they don't like. I didn't expect it to happen quite so quickly, though.

__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

On Tuesday the burger chain announced a promotion on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, offering women 3 million Russian roubles ($47,000) and a lifetime supply of Whoppers if they get impregnated by football players competing in the World Cup.